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Royal Philips (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) is providing a dedicated and scalable telehealth solution that can help general practitioners (GPs) and healthcare institutions manage the increased patient flows resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak. Philips’ scalable telehealth solution facilitates the use of online screening, follow-up questionnaires and monitoring, and external call center collaborations with the aim of preventing unnecessary visits to general practitioners and hospitals and remote monitoring of the vast majority of COVID-19 patients who are quarantined at home.

Philips is a leading health technology company in diagnostic imaging, image-guided therapy, patient monitoring and health informatics, as well as in consumer health and home care. The company is now providing healthcare institutions with a telehealth solution to process high volume coronavirus-related healthcare requests via online screening, and supporting healthcare providers in the use of external call centers to offer the correct care to patients. The solution is based on Philips’ existing and proven Patient Reported Outcomes Management solution, which is being used by more than 100 healthcare institutions globally.

As a first step, patients complete an online questionnaire at home. Based on the results, the caregiver can let the online solution assign patients to a risk class and take appropriate actions. If needed, the patients can be monitored via automated follow-up surveys. Patients with a high-risk score are called by a call center for additional information. If the call center determines that care is required, the patient is referred to the GP, who can then provide the necessary care or send them to the hospital.

“The outbreak of the new coronavirus is a major challenge for everyone in healthcare. That is why we have equipped one of our existing and proven telehealth solutions with the capabilities to screen and monitor patients remotely. This remote screening solution supports healthcare institutes to diagnose and treat patients at alternative points of care and is helping to safeguard the scarce critical care capacity,” said Roy Jakobs, Chief Business Leader Connected Care, member of the Executive Committee, Royal Philips. “We have a broad portfolio of telehealth and remote care solutions at Philips. We are now working with hospitals and GPs to see how we can use these solutions to help frontline healthcare workers and their patients during the COVID-19 crisis.”